Antivaccinationists promote a bogus internet "survey." Hilarity ensues as it's retracted.

Sadly, the abstract is no longer available at Google cache.

I am waiting to see where this turns up next.

As to Mawson, yes he is an acolyte of Andrew Wakefield and has been anti-vaccine at least as far back as 2007.

On the 2012 Age of Autism post, there was a comment dated November 11, 2015 that asks about the status of the survey. Less than an hour later, Age of Autism editor John Stone writes "It has been completed and is under consideration by a journal."

So has the study been under consideration by Frontiers for a year, was it looked at by another journal, or is the comment incorrect?

I loved this desperate lumping together of any and all available possible neuro-developmental issues: "NDDs (defined as Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and/or a learning disability)".

And all without providing any evidence of actual formal diagnoses...

Which is convenient...

Mike, would you believe John Stone if he told you the time?

His record on anything resembling a fact or what everyone else accepts as truth is not great...

So has the study been under consideration by Frontiers for a year, was it looked at by another journal, or is the comment incorrect?

Frontiers did not consider it for a year, as it was only submitted to them on September 17 this year.

A likely scenario is they submitted it to a more prestigious location, but went to a pay to play location after being rejected.

The fact that Stone knows what is happening with the paper suggests that the description of how parents were recruited is likely to be inaccurate.

And now we are all waiting for the anti-vaxxers to cry "censorship" and "conspiracy" because nobody wants to publish this "study".

The google cache of the Frontiers page as it appeared on 27 November has been preserved here: https://archive.is/L6fpe

"Vaccination remained significantly associated with NDD after controlling for other factors."

Ahem... What other factors? Controlled how? Oh, wait... You meant to say "Vaccination remained significantly associated with the mothers' survey responses we dumped into the NDD category." Silly me,thinking you were actually studying ASD rather than the psyches of homeschoolin' helicopter moms in two deep Red(neck) states, 'keep Portland-weird' Oregon, and the state whose disgusting make-it-go-away weird has made it a univerally recognized meme for strange, unusual and ignominious activity.*

How does 'we asked homeschool groups to email a survey' count as a methodology section abstract? What were the questions? How were they worded, ordered, introduced? What type of answers were solicited (T/F, multiple choice, Likert scale, short answer)? How were the responses coded, and by whom?

Ah, I get it. Anthony R. Mawson, M.A., Dr.P.H., may be working out of Mississipp nowi, but he's actually 'Florida Man'!
____

* These are real:
Florida Man Bursts Into Ex's Delivery Room, Fights New Boyfriend While She Gave Birth [] Florida Woman Tells Cops She Has No Idea How Drugs Got in Her Genitals [] Florida Man Throws an Alligator Into a Wendy's Drive-Thru Window [] Florida Man Assaults His Boss With Frozen Hamburger.

There's also this, but I think it's made up:
Florida Teen Operates Holistic Alternative Health Clinic.

.Malachi Love-Robinson, 17 was caught pretending to be a doctor at St. Mary's Medical Center, in West Palm Beach, Florida – he even observed gynecological exams. The hospital didn’t press charges against Love-Robinson, because he hadn’t interacted with any patients. The enterprising teen took that as a sign to go ahead and opened the New Birth New Life Holistic and Alternative Medical Center and Urgent Care in West Palm Beach and billed himself as Dr. Love-Robinson. He didn’t claim to be an M.D., but rather a PhD as well as "HHP-C" and an "AMP-C," although no one is quite sure what those designations mean. The health department caught on and shut the clinic down last February. Love-Robinson was arrested for fraud and practicing medicine without a license.

Totally unbelievable! Health officals in FLORIDA shutting down and prosecuting a quack? You have to b e pulling my leg!!

And now we are all waiting for the anti-vaxxers to cry “censorship” and “conspiracy” because nobody wants to publish this “study”.

Over in the slum Laura Hayes is too busy harassing the President of New York University.

Dr. Anthony R. Mawson, MA, DrPH

Are we supposed to be impressed that Mawson has an M.A.? That normally means "Master of Arts", and it can be in any field, not necessarily health related. In some fields, including chemistry and biology, that degree is actually a red flag: a consolation prize for somebody who washed out of a Ph.D. program.

And what's with co-author Binu Jacob being described as a "former graduate student"? In my field that detail would be considered TMI: if (s)he has moved elsewhere, the normal way to treat that situation is to give both the former and the current affiliation. In this case the phrasing implies that this person left without completing a degree.

sadmar @8 -- As a conn-ih-sewer of fine writing, you might enjoy this Charles Pierce article about Florida Governor Rick Scott's troubles from a few years ago. The money quote:

Florida Man. To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes's assessment of Dr. Watson, Florida man is the stormy petrel of criminal crazy. And, while Governor Batboy is Florida Man in a fine suit, in his heart, and increasingly in the public mind, he is running out his backdoor, barefoot, his mullet flapping in the breeze, with half the local sheriff's department and a film crew from Cops in pursuit, while the local DA wonders about the human heads in the icebox.

-- http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21744/rick-scott-is-flor…

Not to mention that there are a lot of homeschooling mothers who vaccinate their first child, homeschool that child due to learning or health issues (e.g. autism), fall into the anti-vax mindset that's rife among homeschoolers and then don't vaccinate their younger children. That would significantly skew a survey like this.

# 8 sadmar
I'm a fan of the Carl Hiaasen books, set in Florida, but I must admit I thought he was using literary licence when describing many of his characters. I stand corrected.

I recall that when the KIGGS study came out (showing that vaccinated children's health differed from that of unvaccinated kids only in that the latter group got sick more often from vaccine-preventable diseases), antivaxers yelped about how the study was too small to be significant (17,641 children were evaluated).
And now they're trumpeting a "study" involving 415 homeschooled children whose mothers answered an online questionnaire.

The irony is immense.

"We are at the forefront of the vitalistic health revolution by offering studies within the fields of Chiropractic, Functional Kinesiology, Vitalistic Nutrition, Positive Psychology, Functional Neurology and Positive Business, using entrepreneurship for social change."

I have no doubt that concentration in fields like Positive Business leads to social change, i.e. upward mobility among practitioners. Dr. Mercola's mansion provides a good example.

I was a little encouraged by the fact that even some anti vaccine activists recognized that this is an invalid study, though it's sad so many of them uncritically accept it - including Andrew Wakefield who, as a former scientist, should know better.

Given the sampling space, I am rather surprised that the results were not stronger.

I think this is the survey (it comes from Jackson State and is directed at home schooled families) that was given to home schooling parents: http://www.nheri.org/pdfs/Survey%20PDF%202012-08-21.pdf

Page 11 has a question that is probably from where they pulled their neurodevelopmental disorders numbers. How much you wanna bet they clumped ADHD, ASDs, Child served under IDEA, Childhool disintegrative disorder, conduct disorder, depression, encephalopathy, epilepsy, Guillan-Barre syndrome, hearling losss, learning disability, seizures and suicide attempts as their neurodevelopmental disorders?

Orac writes,

Then there is the issue of the journal itself. Such predatory open access journals follow a business model that involves charging publication fees to authors to publish just about anything.

MJD says,

Open Access Journals - Creative and inventive people can place their well intended efforts into the public domain at their expense.

Amazing, freedom-of-speech prevails in an effort to find a "Diamond in the rough".

Unless the article is pulled or retracted. Even then, a shadow of the effort often remains as a teaching tool.

666 kids? Will the NWO stop at nothing?

Rina (#12): Yes, birth order and vaccination status would be an interesting part of the research.
If only we could all see it...
Magdalen

Alas, these are also the people who believe that their children can lose their diagnosis by drinking bleach.

jrkrideau@13: I grew up in Miami, so I first encountered Hiaasen's writing when he was a reporter and later columnist for the Miami Herald. The Florida depicted in his novels is slightly exaggerated. But only slightly.

In one of his early novels, Skin Tight, a young woman visits a plastic surgeon for a nose job and is never seen or heard from again. One of the novel's secondary characters is a dead ringer for Geraldo Rivera from his Al Capone's vault days. That character dies a karmic death.

Open Access Journals – Creative and inventive people can place their well intended efforts into the public domain at their expense.

You clearly don't know how predatory journals operate and how they are used as vehicles to give a patina of legitimacy to cranks or victimise unwitting authors. They own the copyright and often sell space for outrageous fees and have no real peer review. This is damaging to scientific inquiry. If yahoos like Mawson want to publish their drek then just have obvious vanity press magazines for such a purpose.

# 17 said
"Page 11 has a question that is probably from where they pulled their neurodevelopmental disorders numbers. How much you wanna bet they clumped ADHD, ASDs, Child served under IDEA, Childhool disintegrative disorder, conduct disorder, depression, encephalopathy, epilepsy, Guillan-Barre syndrome, hearling losss, learning disability, seizures and suicide attempts as their neurodevelopmental disorders?"

And all those would be reasons to homeschool a child. And then fall prey to the anti-vaccination ideas that are rife among homeschoolers (I'm a homeschooling mom, who also used to be anti-vax, so I've seen it) and then not vaccinate the subsequent children who don't have the eldest child's health or developmental difficulties. I can't emphasise enough what a big factor this kind of thing is.

And all those would be reasons to homeschool a child.

Don't forget that Mississippi doesn't allow nonmedical exemptions from school vaccines. The bias was built in beforehand.

Yes, birth order and vaccination status would be an interesting part of the research.

No, they wouldn't. You have a false premise: that this is "research".

If only we could all see it….

Don't need to. Read the questionaire Chris Hickie linked. (Awesome, Chris! Thanks!)

No need to ponder typical methodological issues like sample size, n-values, control groups, etc etc. No need, in fact, to do anything but read the first paragraph of the survey introduction:

Dear Parent,
This study concerns a major current health question: namely, whether vaccination is linked in any way to children's long-term health. Vaccination is one of the greatest discoveries in medicine, yet little is known about its long-term impact. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effects of vaccination by comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated children in terms of a number of major health outcomes,
including asthma, autism, diabetes, and learning disability.

Gee, don't tell us how you want us to fill out this survey to 'prove' your hypothesis or anything.

Alas, these are also the people who believe that their children can lose their diagnosis by drinking bleach.

What makes you think their children have diagnoses to lose? Survey says: "Please indicate each and every illness or condition that your child has been diagnosed with by a licensed physician or other healthcare practitioner." Well, I kept my offspring away from that Mengelian so-called 'medicine' and it's toxic injections, so of course my perfect kids have always been perfectly healthy, and I've never had to take them to an un-natural pharma-shill 'doctor', much less (gasp) a psychiatrist! (ADHD, ASD, conduct disorder, depression, learning disability, and suicide attempt being check-boxes under the survey item above.) So I can just skip this section...

GI-GO, or something.

IMHO: Best Hiassen novel for skeptics; Lucky You.

"Native Tongue" is also good for sceptics.

The dangers of being ignorant of science is a recurring theme in Hiaasen's novels. Mostly it's ecological issues (at times Hiaasen gets anvilicious on the subject), but in one novel a murder-at-sea scheme goes wrong because the would-be murderer got the direction of the Gulf Stream flow backwards (resulting in the intended victim's survival), and in another a gang of would-be neo-Nazis kidnaps a supposedly perfect Aryan Hooter's waitress who turns out to be Jewish, making the point that race is a social construct rather than a genetic one.

Hiaasen himself doesn't have any scientific training that I am aware of, so I don't expect his depictions of lab work to be too accurate, but in Native Tongue he does have the scientist character keep a lab notebook describing the measurements he is making and noting his growing suspicions that he was recruited to legitimize a scam.

I just bought his latest, Razor Girl. I haven't had a chance to read it, so all I know is what is on the jacket blurb (this one involves fraudulent automobile accident claims).

Wonder if any of the home schooled spawn were named Damien?

Mark 29
Only the last one of course.

I noticed the image Orac used shows three (3) vials.

Could they be single Measles, Mumps, and Rubella vaccines?

Is this a subliminal message?

@Orac,

Is Wakefield getting into your head?

I looked but I did not see it, any reference to the number of original emails that were sent? Do we even want to know the response rate?

palindrom: Thank you! I needed a laugh.

Rina @24: It is remarkable, though, how "wouldn't look twice in an office" ADHD is lumped in with severe autism and deafness. Like, yo, those aren't related.

I looked but I did not see it, any reference to the number of original emails that were sent? Do we even want to know the response rate?

Hard to say exactly. The description given is that it went to homeschool parents in 4 states. So the total of children homeschooled in those states are: MS 16,230; LA 24,042; FL 87,588; OR 18,814 for low estimates from here for a total of just over 146,000 children.

Only those between 6 and 12 were eligible. This is about 39% of the total homeschooled (numbers from here).

So if the email went to all eligible homeschooled families in the 4 states that would cover about 57,000 children. Even if it didn't go to all the families, but only those that are members of the bigger organisations, it is clear that the response rate was abysmal.

Yet another source of bias.

I regard homeschoolers as falling into two broad groups. The apparently considerably small group includes people whose children are not well served in regular school settings and who wish to have their children as well educated as possible under the circumstances. The other group, which I think is much larger, includes those who don't want their children exposed to nasty, corrupt, ungodly ideas. There is an us versus them attitude right from the start.

Though I haven't spent much time "doing my research", my impression is that the latter group are often dubiously competent to teach their children anything. If their child doesn't perform well it must be the fault of someone or something else. It can't be because the kid just ain't too bright or that mom isn't much use as a teacher. Vaccines! Yes, they musta damaged poor Hezekiah and that's why he does poorly on those tests the state makes him take. They told us to vaccinate the kids and it caused us damage.

Yes, based on a doubtful study of 666 subjects, as an ex-technicaI author I would definitely agree, the devil is in the detail.

@ Eric Lund #10: His CV is available online. I looked it up: http://www.jsums.edu/health/dr-anthony-a-mawson/

The MA does stand for Master of Arts. His MA is in Sociology. He has a Master's and a doctorate in Public Health.

He has a lengthy publication history, including some reputable journals like the Lancet. He also has an obsession with retinoids and vitamins, based on his publication list. I have no clue if that means anything, but it seemed interested at first glance.

It makes me wonder why he would have to go to a journal like Frontiers . . . .the article must have been truly horrid.

@ Keith B:

They could have sent it to the parents of every home-school child in the U.S, and gotten a 100% response rate. It. Would. Not. Matter. Look at the survey ay Chris Hickie's link. Read the Intro in my #26. If you don't see that anything past that it a waste of time, look again.

He has a lengthy publication history, including some reputable journals like the Lancet. He also has an obsession with retinoids and vitamins, based on his publication list. I have no clue if that means anything, but it seemed interested at first glance.

Most of his more recent papers are subtitled: "hypothesis", "a new theory", "a new perspective".

I suspect there is something quite significant in the fact that a person sees a new perspective for topics as widely disparate as learning disorders, influenza, malaria, violence and dengue fever. Reminds me a lot of a person who owns a hammer.

He also has an obsession with retinoids and vitamins, based on his publication list. I have no clue if that means anything

Mawson seems to be convinced that almost any disease can be a manifestation of vitamin-A toxicity, and it would be fun to engage him in an argument with numpties from the "Vitamin-A-cures-measles-no-need-for-vaccines" school of thought. Anyway , this happened:

Sometime around the end of 2008, Mawson was invited to speak before a legislative committee of the Mississippi House of Representatives. His remarks, given in his individual capacity, were apparently controversial and led to a written complaint to UMMC from the head of the Mississippi Department of Health. Around this same time, Mawson’s work and his compliance with UMMC procedures came under increasing criticism. This included complaints from Mawson’s department chair, Dr. Owen Evans. Based on Dr. Evans’s concerns, Mawson was placed into a Performance Improvement Plan on July 1, 2009, which was intended to remedy concerns about his work quality within the department.
In accordance with IHL policies requiring notice by September 1, UMMC notified Mawson on August 18, 2010, that it would not renew his employment contract the following year. But in the months after this notice of non-renewal, Mawson allegedly engaged in other troubling conduct that led to a conflict with, and claim of non-sexual harassment from, an assistant at the Center for Research of the Natural Treatment of Disease.

There is no record of what the "Center for Research [on] Natural Treatment of Disease" did, or why Mawson was allegedly harassing an assistant there, but one possibility is that he got into a fight with supplement scammers.

1. Vaccines and the development of food allergies: the latest evidence
http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i5225/rr-0

2. "Vaccine Refusal Revisited — The Limits of Public Health Persuasion and Coercion"
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1608967#t=comments

3.Considerations for Developing a Zika Virus Vaccine
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1607762#t=comments

4. Significant protein sequence alignment between peanut allergen epitopes and vaccine antigens
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310021910_Significant_protein_…

Oh great, Mr. Peanut Oil Obsession is back...

So Vinu post four links, two of which are authored by him. Also, he is listed as an engineer in one of those papers.
The mockery just writes itself.

I am not comfortable with the idea of retracting a paper without legitimate reasons (plagiarism, fraud, etc...). Reading the abstract is sufficient to identify an obvious recruitment bias, which is not concealed by the authors. I have seen dozens of "conventional" papers with a similar recruitment bias, which have never been retracted. By retracting the paper, the editor tries to maintain his legitimacy in order to keep his predatory activity. Instead, lay people should be aware that one must not believe everything published.

The triggers for autism are environmental and vaccines happen to be part of our environment. This sounds pretty plausible, doesn't it?? I thought it did. What do you think?
"Every vaccine the mother received, the child's father, the grandparents received and so on affected our own offspring. This goes for all of us. The unvaccinated kids may not have been vaccinated themselves but their bloodline was already damaged from others vaccinated before them. Vaccines change our DNA. Vaccines turn genes on that otherwise would not be and this leads to genetic defects that once is present can present disease symptoms. I can bet that the kids showing autistic signs probably have MTHFR or MRC1, just to name two of an endless amount of genetic defects brought on by different factors, including vaccines.

Environmental toxins of any sort can do this. Vaccines are the biggest culprit since directly injected into the body. These unvaccinated children showing signs of autism were likely born from vaccinated parents and their autism is usually much less severe than a child who was vaccinated and then presented signs of autism.

Children born from a parent who served in the military are at an increased risk of suffering autism. Everything we put in our body, including gmo baby formula laced with glyphosate affects our children, it can affect their fertility, the ability to cause cancer and gene mutations. Vaccines do the same thing.

Eliminating toxins in the diet is crucial and any other toxin in the environment. It's tough to keep a child healthy these days because the spraying in the sky that routinely goes on every day, the water supply being tainted, the ocean being tainted and the food supply being tainted, etc. it's tough to keep one toxin free, it feels like it's impossible. We need to stop buying into these products and lessen demand and do the best we can. Once a vaccine is injected, all it takes is one protein to turn on a harmful gene that was kept in check. Once the vaccine ingredients enter the body, they damage the nervous system, leading to autistic children whose body was already compromised but the vaccines pushed them over the threshold." ~*Anonymous*

You need to explain why environmental neurotoxins can trigger autism but the neurotoxins found in a syringe cannot.

The triggers for autism are environmental

This is a dubious assertion.

vaccines happen to be part of our environment. This sounds pretty plausible, doesn’t it?? I thought it did.

I don't. You have to create a plausible hypothesis how vaccination could cause autism. Otherwise you have nothing.

You need to explain why environmental neurotoxins can trigger autism

What "environmental neurotoxins" can trigger autism?

but the neurotoxins found in a syringe cannot.

What neurotoxins are in vaccines? And you have to remember the principle that "the dose makes the poison".

@Julian Frost
It's pretty clear you haven't done any research on autism. Do you at least concede that vaccines can cause "vaccine encephalopathy". See it in the vaccine injury table here?
http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/vaccineinjurytable.pdf

It’s pretty clear you haven’t done any research on autism.

Then why not educate them, rather than just blame? Since you've done the research, as well as the claims, it shouldn't be hard to answer his questions.

@Julian Frost
There is no agreed on definition for vaccine encephalopathy, however in this disorder, children commonly experience developmental regression and seizures within one to 14 days after administration of a vaccine which may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms including autistic behavior, autism or seizures. Below are four ways autistic conditions are caused and confirmed by statements from the current President of pharmaceutical giant Merck's Vaccines Division, by US Government agencies, by the US Federal Court and in formally published academic journal papers.
[Text of May 5th 2008 email from US HRSA to Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News]. In it the US Health Resources Services Administration [HRSA] state to CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson.

"We have compensated cases in which children exhibited an encephalopathy, or general brain disease. Encephalopathy may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms including autistic behavior, AUTISM, or seizures."
https://childhealthsafety.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/attkisson-cbs-hrs…

Vaccine induced encephalopathy can, and does, result in autistic behavior and autism. Therefore vaccines can, and do, cause autism. Playing word games with the public isn't going to change that fact.

Let me repeat that. Vaccine induced encephalopathy can, and does, result in autistic behavior and autism. Therefore vaccines can, and do, cause autism. It would be impossible to claim vaccines don't cause autism since they've conceded vaccines can cause "vaccine encephalopathy". However, they could lie about it and say they don't.
http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/vaccineinjurytable.pdf

This is all a game to the government. A game of switching disease-labels. A game of avoidance. A game of denial. A game of protecting the reputation of vaccines. Shuffle the words. Shuffle the disease-labels. Protect the vaccines. But any sane person can see the government has, in fact, admitted that vaccines cause autism. And I'm sure others have been made aware of this on this particular website. Why this debate continues is just beyond my understanding.

It’s pretty clear you haven’t done any research on autism.

I am autistic. It's pretty clear you're an assumptious dimwit.

Do you at least concede that vaccines can cause “vaccine encephalopathy”

It's just "encephalopathy". And autism is not a brain injury.
Finally, and going back to your first comment, the idea that a child can develop autism from the vaccines his/her parent received is an extraordinary one, and thus requires extraordinary evidence.

It’s tough to keep a child healthy these days because the spraying in the sky that routinely goes on every day, the water supply being tainted, the ocean being tainted and the food supply being tainted, etc.

It is possible to be a troll without copy-pasting moron-drool from FB, you know.

It sounds like we have two-year-olds making silly comments in this thread.

This is all a game to the government. A game of switching disease-labels. A game of avoidance. A game of denial. A game of protecting the reputation of vaccines. Shuffle the words. Shuffle the disease-labels. Protect the vaccines

This is all a game to the time-wasting trolls. A game of copy-pasting from Infowars / Antivax sites circa 2014. Copy and paste. Spread the stupid.

I'll leave this here so you can battle over it. "A positive and statistically significant relationship was found: The higher the proportion of children receiving recommended vaccinations, the higher was the prevalence of autism or speech or language impairment. A 1% increase in vaccination was associated with an additional 680 children having autism or speech or language impairment."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21623535/

Feel free to battle over this as well.
"Elevated levels of measles antibodies in children with autism."

"The antibody to this antigen was found in 83% of autistic children but not in normal children or siblings of autistic children. Thus autistic children have a hyperimmune response to measles virus, which in the absence of a wild type of measles infection might be a sign of an abnormal immune reaction to the vaccine strain or virus reactivation."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12849883
http://www.pedneur.com/article/S0887-8994(02)00627-6/abstract

First Article: written by Gayle DeLong, well known to us here. Only the abstract is available.
Second Article: written by Singh and Jensen, also well known here. Only the Abstract is available. There was a response: "A potential link between measles virus and autism: age-matched control groups are essential." Looks like it may have some methodological flaws.
Pretty weak tea.

Isn't quoting childhealthsafety a sub-set of Scopie's Law?

I’ll leave this here so you can battle over it.
Feel free to battle over this as well.

Feel free to read the papers yourself and pass on your own non-plagiarised impressions.
Feel free to die in a fire.

As for "do your own research on autism" or whatever: no, my colleagues and I would leave that sort of thing to one of our honorary consultants, who was a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry, specialising in autism, formerly a colleague of Michael Rutter, a co-author of the ADI-R...Leave it to the pros we reckoned.

And, to repeat something I have said many times before, certainly in the UK if there was any remotely credible evidence that vaccines or any other "environmental factor" was causing autism everyone, but everyone, in CAMHS and paediatrics and special needs education would be screaming at our politicians, marching on parliament, demanding heads on poles, because we have enough to do, so removing an obvious cause for such a disorder would be great.

"You need to explain why environmental neurotoxins can trigger autism"

I believe "citation needed" is the correct form here.

Lose many, many points if you mention mercury. And if you don't know why you should lose points for that, then lose even more points.

*Sigh*

Assessment for possible AS never was my favourite part of my job, but seems to be the one I end up arguing about most on the interwebs...

Anyone up for a discussion of self-harm assessment? Or gender identity issues? I found those areas much more interesting and far preferred to work with bairns who came to us for those sorts of reason.

"reported findings from anonymous online questionnaires completed by 415 mothers of home-schooled children 6-12 years old"

Right there's where the legitimacy flew out the window. That's like a global warming study by looking at traffic at a gas station. For half an hour.

Anyone up for a discussion of self-harm assessment?

Alas, all the working stiffs who just plunged kitanas into their abdomens by voting for Trump* aren't up for talking about that, but the Sanders/Warren wing of the Democrats would definitely like that assessed.

* see news on 'Price, Tom', and 'Mnuchin, Steven'.

There is no agreed on definition for vaccine encephalopathy

That's one way of putting it.

Imaskeptic: Every vaccine the mother received, the child’s father, the grandparents received and so on affected our own offspring. This goes for all of us. The unvaccinated kids may not have been vaccinated themselves but their bloodline was already damaged from others vaccinated before them. Vaccines change our DNA.

That's kind of impressive. An entire paragraph and not one fact in it. No one got the same vaccines as their parents or grandparents because progress is a thing. I never got the smallpox vaccine, and the polio vaccine I got was a looong way away from the oral vaccine of the 1950s.And no, vaccines or adjuvants don't lurk in genes.
You are not a skeptic, you're the opposite-I bet if you looked up right now you'd see the words 'gullible' written on your ceiling.

#47 ImaSkeptic
Pl. see:
Pandemrix induces narcolepsy and cow's milk contaminated vaccines induce Autism Spectrum Disorders?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301602551_Pandemrix_induces_na…

#52 Julian Frost,

"And autism is not a brain injury."
Cerebral folate receptor autoantibodies in autism spectrum disorder
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3578948/

Cerebral folate receptor autoantibodies stop folate uptake. You starve the brain by cutting off an essential nutrient, that IS brain injury. And Frye et al. were able to reverse the effect at least partially by folinic acid therapy which supplied folate to the brain via an alternate path.

Read it. The Abstract contains the conclusion. Always a warning sign. A Sample Size of 93. Another warning sign.
Most crucial, under the Study Limitations

This study was not a clinical trial and neither the physicians nor the parents were blinded to treatment...our controls were not given a placebo...we used a subjective parental report rather than objective assessment measures.

Unconvincing, to say the least.

“Every vaccine the mother received, the child’s father, the grandparents received and so on affected our own offspring. This goes for all of us. The unvaccinated kids may not have been vaccinated themselves but their bloodline was already damaged from others vaccinated before them. Vaccines change our DNA. Vaccines turn genes on that otherwise would not be and this leads to genetic defects that once is present can present disease symptoms.

Fascinating! Anti-vaxx "research" never ceases to amaze me how scientifically-illiterate it is.

This is where most anti-vax "theories" read like something out of a bad science fiction novel....

vinu arumugham @ 70
Cerebral folate deficiency with folate deficiency autoantibodies is an inherited condition,passed from mother to baby in the womb.They do not come from vaccines.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3578948/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4983204/

FRAs and autism,which I have,are associated with many different congenital and genetic disorders.Mitochondrial disease,primary immune deficiencies,childhood autoimmune disease where there is a family history,neural tube defects,cerebral palsy,the list is growing all the time.I personally have a very rare,possibly unique genetic disorder,we are still trying to figure out.The antivaxers have been trying to connect CFD and FRAs to vaccines for years,but the science proves there is no there there.What CFD due to FRAs is,is a very treatable and reversible cause of autism,in those proven to have the condition.

ImaSkeptic, anyone who cites Gayle DeLong, a professor of finance who thinks any child who receives speech and language is autistic (which would have been a big surprise to my daughter's hearing impaired friend), does not know much about autism.

Oh, and looky... a link to to a paper by VK Singh, a transfactor friend of Hugh Fudenberg. Oh, and there is a link to Cliff Miller's "childhealthsafety" site, isn't that a special kind of idiocy:
http://jabsloonies.blogspot.com/2014/05/that-colossal-tool-clifford-mil…

ImaSkeptic... is only a "skeptic" of reality and real science.

The unvaccinated kids may not have been vaccinated themselves but their bloodline was already damaged from others vaccinated before them.

PGP @ 68: when you argue with some troll about this "contamination of the bloodline" gibberish, you are arguing with the monkey -- the actual organ-grinder is some Neo-Nazi "Vaccines Exposed" sh1tweasel on the FB.
Lazy troll is not taking this seriously enough to write his own bespoke, customised provocations, and is simply copy-pasting random crap for sh1ts-n-giggles.

In my day, trolls took some pride in their work.

ImaSkeptic (no, you're not. You're really really not), here is an extract of a comment made by Antaeus Feldspar 14 months ago. It perfectly answers your "the vaccines parents receive make their children autistic".

Science is about trying to explain the evidence. The [claim you made is] about trying to explain away the evidence. True scientists go where the evidence leads. If the evidence showed that vaccinated children get autism at a higher rate, we would be asking why. But looking for a means by which we can still believe “vaccines cause autism” even though the evidence suggests no such thing? That’s not science; that’s True Faith trying to impersonate science, and steal the respect that True Faith covets but unlike science has not earned.

I miss Antaeus and hope he'll comment again soon.

"ImaSkeptic" and "Hunter" in another thread have the same lazy-arsed MO of gish-galloping and hand-me-down mendacity, just saying.

Bloodline --- now we're breeding lycans with vaccines

That’s like a global warming study by looking at traffic at a gas station. For half an hour.

The study was worse. It was more like, go to a gas station in Grosse Pointe in January, put up a sign saying "While scientists believe global warming may have serious consequences, economists warn that any attempts to limit global warming will result in drastic rises in fuel costs and dramatically decreased availability. So, honk if you think it's getting warmer".

I'm aware/puzzled/annnoyed/depressed that sciency folk are routinely blind to the problematic basic premises of 'research' involving any measure of human subjectivity, and go right to the issue with sampling, stats, blinding and so on. But this is ridiculous. You're just ignoring the elephant in the room. Who cares about the workings of the scale when a pachyderm is sitting on it?

@ Julian Frost

Synchronicity! I was just thinking about Antaeus yesterday, wondering what he's up to, and hoping he's doing well. So, +1 on "I miss Antaeus and hope he’ll comment again soon."

To the hilariously mis-named ImaSkeptic @ #47 - Thank you for proving Amy Tuteur's point.

"Anti-vaxxers are remarkably dumb and gullible. They just keep passing stuff around; nobody fact checks anything. Anti-vaxxers say whatever they want, with absolutely no regard for the truth, and people believe it. Even when things anti-vax websites say turn out to be obviously untrue, anti-vaxxers don’t mind and cheerfully accept it any way." The Skeptical OB

When your children are barely human, psychologically-altered bots, their nerve cells and synapses failing to connect, and their neurodevelopmental processes dulled to the point of restricting them to sub-human level repetitive grunts and gormless stares, what are you going to do then?

Put down the incredibly bad sci-fi novel and get a real life?

For anyone struggling with autoimmune disease, this new medical textbook is a concise summary of the literature on vaccines that have been found to induce autoimmune conditions. What is obvious is that a typical vaccine formulation contains all of the necessary biochemical components to induce autoimmune manifestations. Physicians need to be aware that in certain individuals, vaccinations can trigger serious and potentially disabling and even fatal autoimmune manifestations.
"Vaccines and Autoimmunity" 1st Edition, by Yehuda Shoenfeld, Nancy Agmon-Levin, and Lucija Tomljenovic.
https://www.amazon.com/Vaccines-Autoimmunity-Yehuda-Shoenfeld/dp/111866…

When your children are barely human, psychologically-altered bots, their nerve cells and synapses failing to connect, and their neurodevelopmental processes dulled to the point of restricting them to sub-human level repetitive grunts and gormless stares, what are you going to do then?

Probably cry. Why do you ask? Do you think this is likely to happen?

#83 @ ImaSkeptic "When your children are barely human, psychologically-altered bots, their nerve cells and synapses failing to connect, and their neurodevelopmental processes dulled to the point of restricting them to sub-human level repetitive grunts and gormless stares, what are you going to do then?"

I unplug their game consoles or disconnect the WIFI so they have to look up from their computers.

Could I get a few autoimmune diseases with my vaccine please? Of course you can.
"Experimental evidence also shows that simultaneous administration of as little as two to three immune adjuvants can overcome genetic resistance to autoimmunity."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22235057

Meanwhile, we have Dr. Paul Offit's quote:
"It [aluminum] is found in all tissues and is also believed to play an important role in the development of a healthy fetus."

He makes this claim based on a more than 40 year old study, Sorensen Dr al. aluminum in the Environment and in Human Health, in Env. Health perspectives 1974 which never concluded that aluminum was believed to play an important role in the development of a healthy fetus. Go figure.

I believe aluminum plays an important role in the development of a healthy fetus, don't you?

"Whilst being environmentally abundant, aluminum is not essential for life. On the contrary, aluminum is a widely recognized neurotoxin that inhibits more than 200 biologically important functions and causes various adverse effects in plants, animals, and humans. The relationship between aluminum exposure and neurodegenerative diseases, including dialysis encephalopathy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Parkinsonism dementia in the Kii Peninsula and Guam, and Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been suggested."
"Link between Aluminum and the Pathogenesis of Alzheimer's Disease: The Integration of the Aluminum and Amyloid Cascade Hypotheses." (2011).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21423554

"...causality analysis demonstrates that chronic aluminum intake CAUSES Alzheimer's disease."
"Chronic aluminum intake causes Alzheimer's disease: applying Sir Austin Bradford Hill's causality criteria." (2014).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24577474

AND

"The application of the Hill's criteria to these data indicates that the correlation between Al (aluminum) in vaccines and ASD (autism) may be causal."
"Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism?" (2011)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22099159
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0162013411002212

Yeah, the vaccine marketers and peddlers are looking pretty good from my end. NOT.

"When your children are barely human, psychologically-altered bots, their nerve cells and synapses failing to connect, and their neurodevelopmental processes dulled to the point of restricting them to sub-human level repetitive grunts and gormless stares, what are you going to do then?"

Many have found rewarding careers swooping in to leave antivax droppings in the comments sections of news stories about immunization.

Tomljenovic and Shaw.
You're making this way too easy for us, ImaSkeptic. Here's a little bit of advice: before dumping links, use the "Search" box up top to see if said "study" was dissected by Orac before.

Vaccines very definitely do cause Autism and they know it --
Look for the Verstraeten Report -- the original report -- before he got the offer to work for Glaxo and amended it. It was released to Congress via a FOIA request and is available on the internet. The response of government was to call pharmaceutical corporations together with them to discuss the evidence. The transcript of those meetings are also shocking. See: Simpsonwood Meeting.

The transcript is titled "Scientific Review of Vaccine Safety Datalink Information", June 7-8, 2000, Simpsonwood Retreat Center, Norcross, Georgia but it was also the first official meeting of the AICP (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices which sets CDC policy) work group on thimerosal and immunization.

Look for the Verstraeten Report — the original report

Nope. You made a claim, so you stump up the evidence. That's how it works around here. Post a link to this supposed original report.

Thimerosal free vaccines? Doubtful. All multidose injections (contain several doses in the same container), must contain a preservative and this is often thimerosal/mercury. To have preservative properties it must be present in a strength of at least 0.01% in the final product. (Equivalent to 50 micrograms thimerosal per 0.5ml dose, or 25 micrograms mercury). The reason why multidose preparations contain preservatives is to prevent contamination from the surroundings in connection with withdrawal of several doses. Single dose injections do not normally require preservatives. They are discarded after the one dose is withdrawn.
HOWEVER
During the manufacturing processes mercury may be used to prevent microbial contamination, even though it will not be present IN PRESERVATIVE STRENGTH in the end product. (This is the case with many single dose injections). The intention is to remove the mercury, but because it is difficult and expensive to remove absolutely all of it, up to 0.3 microgram per 0.5 ml dose is permitted to remain. This is termed "trace" mercury and is not sufficient to have preservative properties because it is not present in sufficient strength. It is often misleading due to the fact that injections may be termed "preservative free" because they do not contain mercury in a high enough concentration to have preservative properties - but they may nevertheless contain traces of mercury!

@ Lawrence, Mephistopheles O'Brien, Dangerous Bacon:

You guys reinforce my faith in humanity.

"Dr. Hooker, a PhD scientist, worked with two members of Congress to craft the letter to the CDC that recently resulted in his obtaining long-awaited data from the CDC, the significance of which is historic. According to Hooker, the data on over 400,000 infants born between 1991 and 1997, which was analyzed by CDC epidemiologist Thomas Verstraeten, MD, “proves unequivocally that in 2000, CDC officials were informed internally of the very high risk of autism, non-organic sleep disorder and speech disorder associated with Thimerosal exposure.”

Factually, thimerosal is a mercury-containing compound that is a known human carcinogen, mutagen, teratogen and immune-system disruptor at levels below 1 part-per-million, and a compound to which some humans can have an anaphylactic shock reaction. It is also a recognized reproductive and fetal toxin with no established toxicologically safe level of exposure for humans.

In November, 1997, the U.S. Congress passed the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act, requiring the study of mercury content in FDA-approved products. The review disclosed the hitherto-unrecognized levels of ethylmercury in vaccines.

In July 1999, public-health officials announced that thimerosal would be phased out of vaccines. The CDC, American Academy of Pediatrics, and FDA insisted that the measure was purely precautionary. They requested of all vaccine manufacturers to eliminate mercury from vaccines.

The requests were denied by vaccine manufacturers and continued every year thereafter.

The FDA does not require ingredients that comprise less than 1 percent of a product to be divulged on the label, so a lot more products may have thimerosal and consumers will never know."
http://diseasescure.pw/cdc-forced-to-release-documents-showing-they-kne…

Im(not)aSkeptic: "When your children are barely human, psychologically-altered bots..."

Actually my autistic son has much more humanity and intelligence than you have demonstrated. Also, your dumping of the same old silly papers is reminiscent of a bot. So whose sock puppet are you now?

But wait. There is more data than the article brings out. A FOIA to get the info was enacted before Brian Hooker got the info and here is some info which can be verified via Safeminds dot org.

The BIGGEST - COVER UP TO CATASTROPHE

The ENTREE: VAXXED – A 2004 CDC 'STUDY'
- Modified once to hide one increased risk - autism.

The MAIN COURSE – A 1999 CDC 'STUDY'
- Modified 4 times to hide multiple big increased risks - see below.

What 1999 'study'?
Thomas VERSTRAETEN (+CDC), examined the effect of mercury containing vaccines on 110 000 children. The initial analysis found the following increases in risk:
.
ADHD: 8 times more

AUTISM: 7 times more

ADD: 6 times more

TICS: 5 times more

SLEEP DISORDERS: 5 times more

COORDINATION DISORDERS: 18 times more

(Source: CDC, by safeminds dot org Freedom of Information A)

The data/analysis was then manipulated 4 TIMES, to eventually give the following published increases in risk:
.
TICS: 1.89 times more

LANGUAGE DELAY: 1.07 to 1.13 times more.
.
The publication stated: “In no analyses were significant increased risks found for autism or attention-deficit disorder.”

(Source Pediatrics. 2003)
.
So what type of changes to the data/analysis were made resulting in it no longer showing such big increases in risks?
.
ONE:
The first analysis compared babies that received 0 mercury to those that got 25 micrograms. This was changed to 0 - 12.5 micrograms.

By doing this, the previously observed increases in risks dropped by up to 86%. e.g. The observed 7.6 times increase in autism was reduced to 1.58, from this single change.
.
TWO
They included data from outside the Vaccine Safety Database (VSD) from Massachusetts. There, the “computer records had been in shambles for years”. And had “significant underreporting of autism” (Source: Congressman David Weldon MD, letter to Gerberding, CDC director)
.
THREE
Decisions concerning what data to include were made so that the unvaccinated were likely to be removed from the dataset used. This created a group that lacked the former vaccinated and unvaccinated proportions. (Source: CDC actions as shown in Safeminds FOIA info)

THE BIG COVER UP

The “generation 0” 1999 Verstraeten analysis, evidences BIG increases in neurological conditions in many children, as statistically linked to vaccination (not just mercury). This is the BIG cover up.
.
THE BIG CATASTROPHE

Today, we see that one in 6 children have learning disabilities.
What was covered up in 2000, is a living catastrophe now.
A plague of neural degeneration. (And many auto immune conditions not looked at in this analysis)
.
Trashing that Data was trashing millions of kids.
Kids are the future.

“WHEN A MAN LIES HE MURDERS SOME PART OF THE WORLD”
(Gerhardt 1607)

Note:
A Major lesson from Verstraeten generation 0 analysis and the Simpsonwood transcript is: The strongest effect was for the highest levels of vaccines exposure at the earliest time of exposure, and this is consistent with the idea that infant brain development is most sensitive to the earliest exposures.

Someone doesn't know the difference between preliminary and final results, it seems.

Yes Orac, I believe we have a sock-puppet above....

Orac: "Is anyone else getting that Fendelsworth feeling here?"

Yes, definitely.

And when the pharmaceutical industry takes over mainstream media news and the news media tells the public that mercury is "good" for kids, bells and whistles should go off in every parent's head!!!
"Breaking News....Mercury is now good for kids!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXf71tFKsCo
Sure. Now let's all pull out our old thermometers containing mercury and let the kids suck out the filling! smh.

I'm still unable to find these two studies mentioned in the news media. Can anyone point those out to me???

ImaSkeptic @ #89: around here, people will click on links provided and read what's on the other side.
"Link between Aluminum and the Pathogenesis of Alzheimer's Disease: The Integration of the Aluminum and Amyloid Cascade Hypotheses" says that " aluminum is a widely recognized neurotoxin", but doesn't mention at what levels it is toxic.
"Chronic Aluminum Intake Causes Alzheimer's Disease: Applying Sir Austin Bradford Hill's Causality Criteria". Only the abstract is available. Not good enough.
"Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism?" Written by Tomljenovic and Shaw. Use the SEARCH Box up top. Tomljenovic and Shaw have been discussed here before.

Definition - What does Sockpuppet mean?

A sockpuppet is a phony name or identity created by an online user to argue, bully or review products as another person. Sockpuppets have a long and storied history; they were once well-known for responding to their own Usenet or blog posts. Nowadays, they also post on social media sites and even review their own work on Amazon.com.

The term sockpuppet stems from its literal meaning, which refers to a puppet created by placing a sock over one's hand. The origins of the term imply that the disguise is generally crude and unsophisticated.

ImaSkeptic, if you are not a Fendleswoth Sock Puppet, use the SEARCH Box to look up "CDC Whistleblower" Dr. Hooker has been discussed here several times already.

So aluminum is a nutrient or essential metal required for the development of a healthy fetus? Great. When can we expect to find aluminum in prenatal vitamins?

Yep, it is the same aluminati sock puppet.

Uh, breast milk, sock puppet, breast milk.

Check 'Hunter' on the chiroquacky thread.

Yep, it is the same aluminati sock puppet.

Not any more.

@#110 MarkN
Aluminum found in breast milk makes aluminum an essential metal required for the development of a healthy fetus? Okay. That would also mean that if lead was found in breast milk it must also be an essential metal. That is some great logic you have there!! I'm so relieved!!

When your children are barely human, psychologically-altered bots, their nerve cells and synapses failing to connect, and their neurodevelopmental processes dulled to the point of restricting them to sub-human level repetitive grunts and gormless stares, what are you going to do then?

One might wonder what Travis himself is up to lately.

When your children are barely human, psychologically-altered bots, their nerve cells and synapses failing to connect, and their neurodevelopmental processes dulled to the point of restricting them to sub-human level repetitive grunts and gormless stares, what are you going to do then?

Sadly, here's not much you can do for anyone once they begin posting on AoA. But I would cut off their credit card and checking accounts so they can't send Andy Wakefield more money.

When your children are barely human, psychologically-altered bots, their nerve cells and synapses failing to connect, and their neurodevelopmental processes dulled to the point of restricting them to sub-human level repetitive grunts and gormless stares,

Not Gergles, but definitely a Gergles acolyte.

How soon will Anti-vaxxers be touting a JAMA Pediatrics paper that showed a raw data association between first trimester maternal flu vaccination and autism?

No association was found after confounders were removed.

When your children are barely human

Whoever fabricated the original of that particular Troll copy-paste had the sense to attribute it to Putin, so it went into high rotation within the Putin-loving boot-licking subset of antivaxxers.

How soon will Anti-vaxxers be touting a JAMA Pediatrics paper that showed a raw data association between first trimester maternal flu vaccination and autism?
No association was found after confounders were removed.

How long before they recognise the name of Lisa Croen, the last author?
Croen collaborated on DeStefano's 2010 paper exculpating thimerosal of any involvement in autism; she was behind the 2011 study on anti-depressant use in the first trimester as a risk factor; and IIRC she did some of the work in 2001 or 2002 on diagnostic substitution as the cause of rising autism rates. Obviously she is part of The Conspiracy, and this new paper is Covering Up the Truth.

Some of these serial trolls remind me of black hole mergers. They start slow and stately, before the in-spiraling becomes apparent. Then it goes faster and faster, stronger and stronger, rapidly accelerating until...*ring*...and gone.

Yeah. Poor Fendelsworth. He/she/it can't control himself/herself/itself. He had been doing fairly well over the last couple of days, too. A few comments, obviously antivax but nothing that raised my eyebrows. I thought he was just another drive-by antivaxer.

Of course, Fendelsworth being Fendelsworth, he just couldn't control himself and this afternoon gave the game away by flooding the comment thread comments about aluminum in vaccines until even I noticed without one of you having to e-mail me to sound the alarm.

ImaSkeptic #81:

“Whilst being environmentally abundant, aluminum is not essential for life. On the contrary, aluminum is a widely recognized neurotoxin that inhibits more than 200 biologically important functions and causes various adverse effects in plants, animals, and humans.

"Aluminium is the third most abundant element in the Earth's crust (after oxygen and silicon) and its most abundant metal."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium
I guess humans shouldn't have moved to earth after their battlestar broke down.

What an ultramaroon! Above and beyond the call of reality challenged.

aluminum is a widely recognized neurotoxin that inhibits more than 200 biologically important functions

This is true, if a large enough block of it falls on your head.

I will credit Vinu with at least sticking to two differently capitalized names in the post-"APV" era.

I guess humans shouldn’t have moved to earth after their battlestar broke down.

Not to forget the problem of Tree-of-Life not growing properly here for lack of thallium in the soil.

jrkrideau@13: I've come to the conclusion that Oregon has alligators.
Hear me out.
Florida, well known for alligators and *really* oddball anti-scientific, well, weird beliefs.
Mississippi, the same.
After living for a year in Louisiana, yeah, a lot of the same.
All of those states have alligators.
So, Oregon must have alligators. The alligators in Oregon obviously have some garish coloration or similar appearance in order to capitalize upon the SEP field phenomenon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else's_problem

Yeah, I'm joking.*

ImaSkeptic@47:

Vaccines change our DNA.
Environmental toxins of any sort can do this.
Eliminating toxins in the diet is crucial and any other toxin in the environment.

Erm, no.
Maybe, maybe not, so far, the research is a definite maybe or maybe not.
Eliminating toxins at all is impossible. That's *why* we have such a gigantic liver! Seriously. It's also why we have a pair of kidneys.

Murmur@62: I do recall some studies that bore more scrutiny in regards to mercury exposure, one suggesting fish intake from mother crossing the placenta, but further scrutiny washed that out.
And to think, as a kid I used to play with mercury from broken thermometers and now, I learn that it killed me or something! ;)

*My sense of humor tends to grow outlandish when I'm having a bad week.
This week, two significant cold fronts passed through the area, with corresponding barometric pressure changes causing severe pain from a probable herniated disc (#&@%! insurance company policies on MRI's!). Add on, a burglary, right after changing the door locks, which were then 90 degrees out of position on the inside toggle from the old locks, resulting in the loss of two cell phones, my MacBook Pro, my wife's Windows 10 tablet and a rifle. One of the intruders then SMS'd a family member of the couple we took in to mention the burglary before we informed anyone of it (it was noticed at the end, as they were departing and honestly, I wasn't about to go staggering with a cane and a firearm down the street to play law enforcement officer. A friend of that individual, who I did awaken barely and recognize, wanted to barter junk for each and every item that disappeared).
Yeah, *really* lousy week. Police detectives have yet to contact us.
I'll have a talk with their captain this weekend, as he's our weekend security at our SCIF/data center.
Add in some ongoing harassment, I've taken the precaution (no children in the house, all adults are trained in safe firearms handling) of loading my M4 with SOST rounds and their peers for the smaller arms.
Yeah, *really* lousy week.
What the burglar doesn't realize is, he took a federally controlled computer, from an authorized location, with sensitive information from both DHS and the FBI on it. From a trusted agent.
As the data is encrypted, I'm far more concerned about the AR7. That could be used to harm or kill someone. All because of an earlier alerting problem.
Oh well, all cameras are now set to cloud record mode, with onsite mirroring.
Now, if I could only find my old field phone...**

**Sorry, Dorit. I know that's a sore subject, even as an off colored joke. I'm not serious. I'd not adopt Gestapo methods - ever.
But, I'm not above tripping the SOB with my cane and using full bayonet drills with that cane on him. Well, until I don't consider him a threat. :)
Using the reasonable person hypothesis, in very jaded, jaundiced views.
I'm not about to let a knucklehead get me imprisoned.

If those were in fact Travis, he went to some effort to try to disguise his usual tells. Of course, comparison copy is always available at AoA.

^ I'm sensing a nonnegligible similarity to "CFT"/"CFt" over at Ethan's joint, though.

Wzrd @131

Oh yeah, I'm familiar enough with some of the mercury studies (we had a long look at Minamata during my degree), but that isn't autism, as you know. It peeves me that many anti-vax eejits conflate the known neurological problems associated with exposure to high levels of certain heavy metals with autism.

BTW in case anyone missed it, all the above links are antivax sites...Might be the reason behind ImaSkeptic's copy pasta of Anti Vax Greatest Hits.

Lol check this from one of the sites prepareforchangeDOTnet;

"The Pleiadians are regaining territory inside our Solar System fast and have already recovered to the degree that is comparable to the situation in May 2016. The Sirian and Andromedan fleet was not affected so strongly by the events in September and early October and was able to hold their positions better.
Every major setback is thus followed with a big leap forward. The Pleiadians are already setting a new Tachyon membrane positioned around the Earth at a certain distance inside the Moon orbit. This membrane is structurally similar to what some other people call the „outer barrier“. This new membrane will cut off the head of the Yaldabaoth octopus from its tentacles and drastically speed up the clearing of the Solar System.

The Pleiadians have also begun to contact non-incarnated humans in their afterlife on the higher astral plane.

The situation on the non-physical planes was quite challenging in the time frame between 1996 and 2016. After the big evacuation of the non-physical humanity in August 1999 only a few billions of non-physical humans remained on the etheric and astral planes around the Earth and many times more Reptilians. These Reptilian hordes were removed layer by layer throughout the years by the Light forces until 2015, when human race again became prevalent on the non-physical planes around the Earth."

Looks like bad times for lizards, I, for one, welcome our new Pleiadian Lords!

so what do you propose has turned autism into such an epidemic that 1 out of 50 or so people today come down with it? if the exponential growth keeps up who knows we could be dealing with 50% of our children with it, and that'd already be debilitating to the society as a whole. you'll blame agricultural chemicals and they blame the vaccines and therefore there is plausible deniability. it seems like you don't even care to find out where it's coming from, or how many articles have you wrote about the possible sources of autism? if the answer is none, then perhaps cos you're a shill.

Not expecting a serious response, but anyways.

so what do you propose has turned autism into such an epidemic that 1 out of 50 or so people today come down with it?

Broadened criteria, increased awareness, parental age, and parental diabetes for one.

I can also imagine increased social acceptance tilting borderline cases towards proper ASD diagnoses, rather than the doc "sparing" the child and the parents from such.
Rate of diagnosis could also be increased by better special needs education available, as could access to professional help, and various other safety nets for bringing up a child on the spectrum...

if the exponential growth keeps up who knows we could be dealing with 50% of our children with it, and that’d already be debilitating to the society as a whole.

Why not over OVER 100%?

First you'd have to demonstrate that there is exponential growth of autism incidence (or even diagnosis).

it seems like you don’t even care to find out where it’s coming from, or how many articles have you wrote about the possible sources of autism? if the answer is none, then perhaps cos you’re a shill.

I assume you merely forgot the link to all the research you have done on the possible sources of autism...

But anyways, type in autism genetics, autism causes or somesuch to the search bar and voilà, Orac has written about possible sources of autism (other than vaccines, you seem to dismiss those articles out of hand for some reason).

Don Mega: "so what do you propose has turned autism into such an epidemic that 1 out of 50 or so people"

Can you kindly explain why in 1991 the neurologist flat out told me my non-speaking three year old did not have autism because he smiled. But then the adult young man was diagnosed with Autism Level 2 in 2014?

What changed? He speaks better than having no words, but that is because of over ten years of speech therapy.

if the exponential growth keeps up

It hasn't.

you’ll blame agricultural chemicals and they blame the vaccines and therefore there is plausible deniability.

I wonder when anyone here "blamed agricultural chemicals". Anyway, it sounds as if the anti-vaxxers are also part of the conspiracy to distract attention from the REAL CAUSE, false flag operations, wake up sheeple!

it seems like you don’t even care to find out where it’s coming from, or how many articles have you wrote about the possible sources of autism? if the answer is none, then perhaps cos you’re a shill.

It is uncharitable of me, but I rather suspect that the people who DO research the causes of autism are also shills in Don Mega's eyes, because they don't provide whatever answer he wants to hear.

it seems like you don’t even care to find out the possible sources of autism

Hmm. If you look carefully at everything 'CDCWhistleblower' Bill Thompson told Brian Hooker, you see that he was pissed at his CDC colleagues for failure to do more to "find out the possible sources of autism." And that is because they spend all their time on showing what is NOT the cause of autism, i.e. vaccines. Which Thompson attributes to the CDC being scared...

And, of course, what they're scared of is the political influence of the frickin' anti-vaxers.

Thompson actually tells Hooker vaccines don't cause autism, but since he's playing Hooker as part of some fever-brain scheme of payback on his CDC colleagues, he frames that in a way that helps Hooker not hear it. And he never gets specific enough about that 'their scared of autism' line to disabuse Hooker of the notion that they're scared of Big Pharma, and they're actually scared of the Congressmen who have used him to stage McCarthyite inquisitions of the CDC brass.

Confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance can be a very powerful things.

Speaking of agricultural chemicals (well, sort of), don't miss this great children's book idea for the kiddies on your list, Dewi and the Seeds of Doom:

"When Dewi is clobbered by a falling rat, the nosy Welsh dragon snoops his way into a challenging predicament. Helped by a toad with a passion for chemical wart cures, Dewi discovers that a megalomaniac baron is secretly breeding mutant corn at an unfriendly castle. To thwart the genetically modified-corn baron's sickening plan, he must use moxie and firepower in a series of catastrophe-skirting capers."

https://www.amazon.com/Dewi-Seeds-Doom-Maggie-Lyons-ebook/dp/B009T5W0KU…

Next up: in the tradition of Melanie's Marvelous Measles, Dewi the Dragon brings gifts of virions and pathogenic bacteria to children, so they can attain natural immunity without toxic vaccines.

Milk contaminated vaccines can explain ~75% of ASD.

Not to mention the affront to Hindus, at least according to Suzanne Humphries, who may well be buttering a lingam as I type.*

Bye again, Vinu.

* At a rickety card table. My movers f*cking no-showed today.

if the exponential growth keeps up who knows we could be dealing with 50% of our children with it

How many f*cking times do I have to do this? Jesus F*cking Christ, if I had time to redo it with current data, the whole "exponential" trip would just be a larger bucket of sh*t to dump over your head.

Stephanie Seneff has never fitted a f*cking curve to her idiot "prediction," which has now silently shifted from 2025 to 2032, because she's a f*cking idiot. Do you want to see the "basis" for her "prediction"? I've got a folder full of the f*cking cartoons – literally – but they're also at her CSAIL site if you want to excavate this idiot sh*t to satisfy your nonexistent curiosity, f*cking robot.

Q. How many more times do I have to do this?
(choose the best answer among the following:)

a. Honey Bot Don't Give A Sh*t
b. In the quantum of the divine, the infinite is equivalent to the null.
c. Until you get all the Led chelated out of your Zeppelin.
d. All of the above.

I'm taking option (e) for the time being.

Stephanie Seneff has never fitted a f*cking curve to her idiot “prediction,” which has now silently shifted from 2025 to 2032, because she’s a f*cking idiot.

I'm going to link to this --
Protection against Gluten-mediated Tight Junction Injury with a Novel Lignite Extract Supplement

-- because it cites Seneff's glyphosate cr@p, and because it's in an OMICS journal-shaped dumpster, and because I'm a bastard.

Shorter version: New lignite-extract dietary supplement (RESTORE), from Biomic Sciences, will remediate the damage caused by glyphosate and gluten intolerance and any other special-snowflake conditions, repair the cell junctions in your intestinal lining, and leave them as tight as a duck's bottom.

"Lignite extract", i.e. these scammers have realised that the suckers will buy coal ash as a dietary supplement if they're told that it's organic.

Must credit Dora.

I would however like to pose as a creative opportunity for the bored, free-spirited, or whatever, the question whether "Vinu Arumughan" can in fact be worked into a version of Jesse Fuller's "The Monkey and the Engineer," which has been stuck in my head all day anyhow.

Sadmar @154

Having read through all the materials, I think Thompson has a bee in is bonnet about Thimerosal. He is convinced it can cause low level harm, not enough, as he tells Hooker, to cause full blown autism, but enough to shave off a few IQ points. He thinks that is what he found in the NEJM article that had to be "handled" by Mink.

^ This might have legs. For example,

Come all without, come all within / You've not seen nothing like Arumughan

Or, with some liberty,

Everything is gonna be different / When I Vinuuu Arumughan

Must credit Dora.

I can't really argue with "Freeze-dried Bravo" per se, but I don't think it's really anything that the contents of that bottle are going to address one way or the other.

Influenza nucleoproteins in the Pandemrix vaccine resemble human hyprocretin receptors.
Pandemrix adminsitration can cause antibodies against hyprocretin receptor proteins.
Result, narcolepsy.

Neisseria meningitidis proteins in the Menveo vaccine resemble multiple human proteins.
Menveo adminsitration can cause antibodies against these human proteins.
Result, Kawasaki disease.

Cow's milk proteins (folate receptor proteins) in numerous vaccines resemble human folate receptor proteins.
Administration of these vaccines can cause antibodies against human folate receptor proteins.
Result, ASD/CFD.

It is not rocket science.

References:
Meningococcal group A sepsis associated with rare manifestations and complicated by Kawasaki-like disease.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19287280

Menveo package insert:
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedPr…

"Among subjects with symptom onset
within 42 days of vaccination (days 12, 25, 29), 3/12049 [0.02%, 95% CI: (0.01% ,0.07%)] MENVEO recipients and 0/2877 [0%, 95% CI: (0%, 0.13%)] control recipients were diagnosed with Kawasaki Disease. "

"To our knowledge, there are no previously published studies looking at lignite extract effects on polarized epithelial cell lines as performed in this study."

Sweet.

I would however like to pose as a creative opportunity for the bored, free-spirited, or whatever, the question whether “Vinu Arumughan” can in fact be worked into a version of Jesse Fuller’s “The Monkey and the Engineer,” which has been stuck in my head all day anyhow.

Open up the switch I'm gonna let him through the hole/'cause the vinu arumugham's got the monkey under control

(I hate the Dead's version(s))

@Narad #170, bravo for the Mighty Quinn reference. It took me a few listens of that song to work out it was a parody.

If "Don Mega" @142 turns out to be an instantiation of the usual troll, let me congratulate him on writing his stuff rather than copy-pasting.

@ herr doktor bimler 167

Shorter version: New lignite-extract dietary supplement (RESTORE), from Biomic Sciences, will remediate the damage caused by glyphosate and gluten intolerance and any other special-snowflake conditions, repair the cell junctions in your intestinal lining, and leave them as tight as a duck’s bottom.

Serendipity. Séralini published in September a study about how little sugar pills provided by one of his pals' homeopathic company are protecting against glyphosate.

Or perhaps, this is a better source.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/health/hylands-teething-tablets-discontin…

Good Herr Doktor @176

If it is one of the usual numpties, then they have ignored/refused to engage with the copious explanations given for the seeming "rise" in autism. And by doing so demonstrate that they are not here to argue or discuss, but merely to dishonestly parrot some tripe or other. I mean to say, quoting Seneff without attribution...It's just not polite, is it?

I cannot remember any of said numpties actually coming back with any substantial argument against the far more likely, and evidence based, explanations for observed "increases" in autism, just a shout of "Big Pharma Shill!!eleventyone!"

Serendipity. Séralini published in September a study about how little sugar pills provided by one of his pals’ homeopathic company are protecting against glyphosate.

IIRC he published two earlier studies in the Journal of Occupational Medicine and Toxicology, then cited those studies in his wretched little paper in a SCIRP screed. I didn't know about the more recent production in the BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, though.

I see Séralini is still claiming to have no COIs or commercial links to Sevene Pharmacorp (who fund his research, pay consultancy fees, and provide him with co-authors).

Turns out that Sevene is kept solvent by a Christian / New-Age faith-healing sect, IVI, "Invitation to Life", that is weird even by my standards:
http://kfolta.blogspot.com/2013/01/seralinis-connections-to-quack-scien…

Man, what a bunch of braindead yappers live here. Needle yourselves senseless, I'm not gonna stop you! The problem is when communist thugs think they can decide what others must believe for the sake of their sheeple herd immunity.

Vinu: "Sorry to hear about your son’s diagnosis.

The best explanation for 75% of ASD patients testing positive for folate receptor antibodies (FRA), is cow’s milk contaminated vaccines"

Don't patronize me. The question is why the same person could not get a proper diagnosis in 1991, but could get one more than twenty years later. Try thinking about what happened in those years that had nothing to do with vaccines.

By the way, you fool, getting the diagnosis was a good thing. Because actually knowing what causes the language and behavior problems opens up all kinds of doors. So instead of ending up homeless and destitute after we parents die, he gets access to supported employment, housing and other disability benefits.

At least until the incoming Trump sycophants drag the USA back into the 19th century. They may even open up the "institutions for the feeble minded" again just to lock up people like my son. It would be just part of their war against the poor, women, minorities and disabled.

@ Chris #182

Bravo! You've exposed Vinu. He thinks the diagnosis is sad, because autism=blight. Of course, your parenting challenges are pretty the same regardless of what your son's traits are called. In addition to the very important question of getting proper external support services, diagnoses make it easier for parents and everyone else to understand ASD-folk and support them in every-day home life.

I have a much younger cousin (now in his 20s) who was a 'weird kid' – friendly, but way too in your face, clueless about social interaction to the point of being a 'problem child'... for which, of course he caught a certain amount of grief, provoking short tempers at school and even at home. The, still a pre-teen he was diagnosed with what was then still called Asperger's. As classic a case of that as you could find really, yet i don't think anyone in his life had even heard of it. Long story short, the diagnosis helped everyone, and put him on the path to a rewarding and productive adulthood.

@ James Lind #169

You could be right about Thompson having a genuine "bee in his bonnet about Thimerosal." But he surely knows they've taken Thimerosal out of the MMR. So I'm not ready to discard my thesis that he was just feeding Hooker whatever he could without flat out lying, thinking a bolstered Hooker could make new trouble for Thompson's enemies in the CDC. In addition to 'payback', my take is that Thompson's hope – again I'll use the phrase 'fever-brain scheme' – was that if everything at the CDC 'autism unit' got blown up, it could be reconstituted in a way that did more inquiry into as yet under-researched causes of autism, and less just fending off the anti-vaxers.

If you look at elements of Thompson's actions and statements – like "make 'Thimerisal causes tics' your mantra!" – most of them sound sincerely wacky. But taken together, they're just so contradictory. My hypothesis is basically the only way I can see to fit them all into some kind of semi-coherent whole.

sadmar: "Bravo! You’ve exposed Vinu. He thinks the diagnosis is sad, because autism=blight. Of course, your parenting challenges are pretty the same regardless of what your son’s traits are called."

Thank you. Interestingly this is today's Point of Inquiry:
http://www.pointofinquiry.org/michael_berube_the_value_and_the_virtue_o…

I read Berube's book about his son over over fifteen years ago to learn more about raising a child with disabilities. Earlier I read many books about dealing with deaf children since my toddler/preschooler could not talk.

I definitely do not need "advice" from Vinu.

sadmar: "But he surely knows they’ve taken Thimerosal out of the MMR".

No version of any MMR vaccine has contained thimerosal. One can tell that someone does not know the basics when they think the "problem" with the MMR was the thimerosal that it never had.

John: "Man, what a bunch of braindead yappers live here."

John, why do you think a string of baseless insults are a valid substitute for evidence and data? Or even a form of intelligent discussion?

Chris:

A. Just the other day I was wondering if ASD adults and advocates could take some pointers from the way the deaf, e.g. students at Galludet, have organized to de-stigmatize their difference and seek full acceptance as whole human beings.

B. I'll restate the point regarding my hypothesis that Thompson was manipulating Hooker:
1. Thompson knows there's no Thimerosal in childhood vaccines.
2. He knows Hooker and other AVs are still hung up on Thimerosal.
3. He tells Hooker Thimerosal is only in flu shots in the U.S., but the AVs should go after that anyway because of its PR value, showing how callous the pharmas are, or something.
4. If the AVs did go with that strategy, it might make waves at CDC, but it would not have any significant traction in implicating vaccines as causal of autism.

C. John thinks a string of baseless insults will short circuit intelligent discussion. Which, lacking good evidence, is exactly what he wants.

@ Sadmar #186

I agree. I think Thompson's real issue is Thimerosal, but he's using MMR to cause trouble. He had an issue with the way they handled the 2004 study, but I think he was already upwards of 90% off the reservation when that went down.

James Lind: "...but I think he was already upwards of 90% off the reservation when that went down."

The slight rise of tics with thimerosal in that study always seemed to me to be a bit of P-hacking. Just look at everything, and just grab onto the one tiny statistical fluke.

Chris,

I agree. I think it is some powerful motivated reasoning. But he goes on and on about it in the transcripts, and it's not just that one paper. He was convinced he found a real signal.

@ James Lind:

I'm nowhere near sciency enough to imagine what the connection might be, but I think Thompson wanted the data on African-American boys included in the pediatrics paper partly in the thought it might have some utility to some future research on causes of autism unrelated (directly, at least) to vaccines. It may be that as a psychologist, his grasp of the science related to possible causal theories led him to be overly optimistic about that.

My guess is he made an argument like that to his colleagues, and when they nixed it, he came to his conclusion that they were too 'scared' to do any kind of causal research at all. I can't imagine he would have failed to identify Andy's gang as the source of this fear, but he may have considered lunatic fringes as ever-present job hazards, and faulted his colleagues for unwillingness to stand up to the Congressfolk willing to exploit AV to whack at Big Guvment.

Whatever the disagreements were, they seem to have festered in a mutual downward spiral until Thompson wound up with an irrational obsessive image of his colleagues as evil incarnate. I've seen things like that happen, most often in personal relationships, so saying the resulting state of mind is 'unhinged' is not to say it's all that rare. But it's awfully hard to talk people out of it, and they sure do some crazy azz sh*t and come up with some crazy azz ideas and perceptions when they're in it.

Sounds right to me.

Big news for vinu:

Acupuncture as we know is a nonspecific method of sticking needles in people.

Acupuncturists report that their needling suppresses Th2 responses (Google for multiple papers on this subject).

Vaccination involves sticking needles in people.

Therefore it is logical to assume that vaccination suppresses Th2 responses.

Suppressed Th2 means allergies including those to food are less likely to develop.

Therefore vaccination reduces the incidence of food allergies.

See, vinu? Now you'll have to give up that silly antivax stuff, for the sake of the children.

it is out there now, and being circulated with an air of 'suppressed visionary manages to release vital paper!!
sigh.
it's here. http://newamericannews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/MAWSON-STUDY.pdf

Perhaps someone who is wise in the ways of meta-data can tell more about who last edited the PDF to highlight some words.

This Frontiers version is 34 pages, the version that James Grundtvig was waving about had 34 pages, I guess he saw the same document.

The incentive for some other journal to publish a version of the paper is now considerably lower.

I can imagine one of the authors sending a copy of the PDF to some interested party, foolishly believing the promise that it would go no further.

It is an undeniable fact that there are complications and negative reactions with vaccines. Therefore the potential risk should be considered, not just the expected benefit.

As we all know, "First, do no harm" is the Hippocratic Oath. However, every newborn receives a HepB shot within the first 24 hours of life. The only way an infant can contract HepB is from the mother. A simple blood test would indicate if the infant is at risk. But the medical profession blunders on, injecting every healthy infant with a unnecessary, potentially dangerous vaccine. Well, they aren't "blundering", this is a serious revenue stream.

I call your attention to the fact that CDC itself owns more than twenty patents for vaccines, off of which it generates over $4.5 billion in revenue every year. CDC is not an objective and impartial judge of vaccine safety!

The only way an infant can contract HepB is from the mother.

No. According to https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/hbv/bfaq.htm

How is Hepatitis B spread?
Hepatitis B is spread when blood, semen, or other body fluid infected with the Hepatitis B virus enters the body of a person who is not infected. People can become infected with the virus during activities such as:

Birth (spread from an infected mother to her baby during birth)

Sex with an infected partner

Sharing needles, syringes, or other drug-injection equipment

Sharing items such as razors or toothbrushes with an infected person

Direct contact with the blood or open sores of an infected person

Exposure to blood from needlesticks or other sharp instruments</

Anyone who is infected and has an accident with a broken glass can spread the disease. Believe it or not, it's been known to happen.

To #230 - Approximately 4 million infants are born in the US annually, and they are to receive 3 shots during their infancy. At a mere $11.60 per shot, that equates to an annual income of $139 billion, just for the vaccine itself. So yes, a profit motive exists.

To #231 - Blood test for HepB on Mother eliminates all infections spread to baby at birth. The other avenues of infection don't exist for an infant. If at some reasonable age, say 6 or older, they feel compelled to vaccinate, the child has a much greater chance of surviving the potential injuries and death reported from this vaccine. A one day old ifant should NEVER receive this potentially toxic injection, unless his mother has tested positive - again FIRST, DO NO HARM.

If you want a well researched, well documented look at this subject, from people without ties to the industry being evaluated, try this link:
http://www.nvic.org/nvic-archives/newsletter/untoldstory.aspx

D. Wagner: "So yes, a profit motive exists."

Compared to what? How would costs be lower if we did not vaccinate for pertussis, Hib, etc? Please provide verifiable documentation that contradicts this:
Economic Evaluation of the Routine Childhood Immunization Program in the United States, 2009

"Blood test for HepB on Mother eliminates all infections spread to baby at birth."

Citation needed. For a couple of reasons, first being that the tests are not perfect with a certain number of false negatives. And next how is conducting a blood test cheaper than vaccinating an infant.

"The other avenues of infection don’t exist for an infant."

Wrong wrong wrongety wrong.

J Gastroenterol. 2017 Feb 9. doi: 10.1007/s00535-017-1315-4. [Epub ahead of print]
Natural history of chronic hepatitis B virus infection in children in Japan: a comparison of mother-to-child transmission with horizontal transmission.

Pediatr Infect Dis J. 2010 May;29(5):465-7. doi: 10.1097/INF.0b013e3181d8e009.
Hepatitis B virus DNA in saliva from children with chronic hepatitis B infection: implications for saliva as a potential mode of horizontal transmission.

World J Gastroenterol. 2005 Jan 21;11(3):418-20.
Horizontal transmission of hepatitis B virus in children with chronic hepatitis B.

J Pediatr Gastroenterol Nutr. 1993 Jan;16(1):66-9.
Horizontal transmission of hepatitis B virus in children.

Am J Epidemiol. 1991 May 15;133(10):1015-23.
Horizontal transmission of hepatitis B virus from siblings and intramuscular injection among preschool children in a familial cohort.

You see why we don't accept argument by blatant argument, and not anything from the National Vaccine misInformation Corporation.

So yes, a profit motive exists.

The rotavirus vaccine costs about sixty bucks. A three -day hospital stay for your child who is hospitalized with a rotavirus will set you and your insurance company back somewhere in the neighborhood of $16,000.

This firsthand evidence was offered by an antivaxxer on Orac's super-secret other blog -- remember him, Chris? -- who thought it was a small price to pay for keeping his special sneauxflake unpolluted by vaccines.

$139 Billion? really?

D. Wagner @232: You said "The other avenues of infection don’t exist for an infant." Clearly you have never been around toddlers. They bite. They bite hard enough to draw blood. They also put everything under the sun in their mouths. It is very easy to have cuts in the mouth that are not obvious to an adult.

So there's plenty of risk of transmission. Also, the younger a person is when they get infected with Hep B the less likely they are to clear the infection and the more likely that it will become liver cancer. Are you prepared to offer up part of your liver to a person with Hep-B caused liver cancer?

I vaguely remember that guy. I know from painful experience that neither rotavirus (rivers of poo) and chicken pox (six month old baby!) are happy zappy fun time. Only someone who hates kids would think they save money by skipping vaccines.

Elliot, he is off by 1000. Just like I thought when I ask anitvaxers to do my little math story problem about the ratio of vaccine doses given versus the number of NVICP compensated claims --- they don't know how to use a calculator.

Chris--yeah, I caught that. The total market for all types of vaccines for the entire planet is something like $24 billion (~ only 2% of drug sales). It's not terribly profitable for the drug companies.

This info is all publicly available of course, but in addition to calculators, the antivaxxers don't know how to find info.

I personally don't care about the cost. I cite the cost only to disprove the allegation that there is no profit motive. What I care about is the health and well being of the new born infant.

The HepB shot carries risk, sometimes even death. I lost a child to SIDS, immediately following a 3rd week series of shots, including HepB. SIDS is a catchall diagnosis for the sudden death of an infant while sleeping, and so they really do not know the cause, but the jury is clearly still out on vaccines. They have a witches brew of some very nasty ingredients, including Aluminum and other adjuvants to suppress the immune system, intended to enhance the body's immune response to an antigen.

So, in order to do no harm, the blood test, even if not always 100% accurate, to screen out mothers that do not have HepB, statistically makes sense. As I mentioned before, 4 million babies are born annually in the US. If you were to go way overboard, and say that 10% of the mothers actually had HepB, then 90% did not. That means the blood test would save 3.6 million infants from receiving the potentially dangerous shot. If only 1% of those infants suffered some form of adverse reaction, then 36,000 infants annually would have been needlessly harmed, even killed, and all could have been prevented by the blood test.

I have skewed the numbers ridiculously low, just to keep it so real there can be no argument. If you were the parent of one of those 36,000 infants harmed needlessly, how would you feel?

#236 JustaTech
I have kids, and grand kids. They can't bite until they have teeth. And at one day old, they don't have teeth.

It is plain insanity to be giving an admittedly dangerous vaccine to a one day old child for something they can't have, unless their mother has it. And the blood test will tell you which one to worry about.

The HepB vaccine is among the safest & we've seen significant reductions in Liver Cancers since the introduction of the vaccine.

And I challenge you to explain the near 50% reduction in the number of SIDS cases since the late 1990s, which corresponds to the increase in the total number of vaccines that kids receive?

"Admittedly dangerous vaccine?" Admitted by who?

And "adjuvants" don't suppress the immune system....just another example of an anti-vaxer who doesn't understand immunology in the slightest.

Wagner
Correction--you mis-represented the cost. Now you've mis-represented the harm as well. You've proven my suspicion that you are wiling to exaggerate (I'm being kind--others would say that you're lying about the facts) to support your position.

BTW--since you're very concerned about the effects the profit motive, do you ensure that everything you buy comes from organizations that are not motivated by profit?

@D. Wagner:

I lost a child to SIDS, immediately following a 3rd week series of shots, including HepB

I'm very sorry for your loss. However, the supposed link between SIDS and vaccination has been investigated. There is no link. in fact, some studies suggest a protective effect from vaccination.
Vaccines did not cause your child's death.

including Aluminum and other adjuvants to suppress the immune system, intended to enhance the body’s immune response to an antigen.

Suppress the immune system to enhance the immune response? I can't even...

From Pro-Vax site we are advised: "Becoming infected with hepatitis B is much more dangerous to your child's health than receiving this vaccine. However, like any medicine, this vaccine can cause side effects but the risk of serious side effects is extremely low."

From another pro-vax site "Signs of a severe allergic reaction can include hives, swelling of the face and throat, difficulty breathing, a fast heartbeat, dizziness, and weakness."

So the fact is, even from sites that are funded by, and represent Big Pharma, there ARE risks of serious side effects. Severe allergic reactions DO occur. And an infant that has swelling of the throat, and "difficulty breathing" can lead to tragedy.

From the Hepatitus B Foundation: "1 in 20 Americans has been infected with the hepatitis B virus" That's 5% of the population (My earlier example used 10%)

As I mentioned, there are 4 million babies born in the US annually. Using 5% rate of infected mothers, that means of the 4 million infants born, 3,800,000 are born from mothers who do not have HepB. That means a simple blood test would prevent 3.8 million newborns from the "extremely low" "risk of serious side effects".

First, do no harm. Test the mother, do not needlessly harm the baby.

The HepB shot carries risk, sometimes even death. I lost a child to SIDS, immediately following a 3rd week series of shots, including HepB. SIDS is a catchall diagnosis for the sudden death of an infant while sleeping, and so they really do not know the cause, but the jury is clearly still out on vaccines

Vaccines aren't given at three weeks. And the jury isn't out on vaccines causing SIDS; that myth only exists in rabid anti-vaxxers' minds. As for your "testing solves everything" nonsense, there is a huge disparity in healthcare in the U.S. and not only are a sizeable proportion of women not able to get tested but the test itself isn't 100% sensitive and specific.

I lost a child to SIDS, immediately following a 3rd week series of shots, including HepB

And I lost my Canadian girlfriend.

I personally don’t care about the cost. I cite the cost

No, you didn't "cite the cost", you made up a false one, too high by a factor of 1000.

And D. Wagner claimed there were shots at three weeks. That also sounds a bit made up.